One of the running clichés in modern America is that local food is an elitist concern—something only foodies, which is to say rich white folks (and especially hipsters), care about.

And then you meet Betti Wiggins.

As the head of the Office of School Nutrition for Detroit Public Schools, Wiggins is responsible for feeding the city’s 46,000 public school students. She was born to parents who left the South during the Great Migration, and was raised in rural Michigan on a truck farm, and one of her most striking straits is the down-home pragmatism with which she approaches her work.

“You know what I did yesterday?” she asks in February. “I went out and contracted for two acres of sweet corn, and